New Blog, New Painting, New Inspirations

I've been inspired by the debut post over at The Siberian Gamer. The author talks about how specific sound and voice can bring you the same feelings when you hear them again and again, even if years have passed and your life has changed. For him, it was the Barenaked Ladies and a recent concert where the lead singer had been replaced, shifting the sound and with that change, removing the feeling he had associated with their music. That instant ability to experience the joy and comfort he felt many years ago disappeared along with the singer. 

It makes sense with music, but I wonder if something visual can also evoke feelings from long ago as opposed to memories. It sounds lame, but the way a certain late-afternoon light hits the leaves of certain trees instantly transports me to that lazy, comfortable, relaxed, and youthful feeling of summers growing up. 

I also wonder if photographs can do this. On vacations, I obsessively take photos, desperate to preserve our time away. My memory stinks, so I use photographs to remember what happened, where we went, what it looked like. But those photos don't necessarily capture the feeling of being there.

When we went to Costa Rica I snapped shot after shot of the cloud forest, the beach, the creatures. It's helpful to look back and remember "oh yes, this day we took this hike and the next day we met that tarantula, etc." I came home with documentation of what happened. We also came home with this painting, which actually manages to capture the feeling of the place. It's not a representation of an activity we did and it's not a snapshot of a view we experienced. But it feels like Monteverde. It illustrates its essence in a way that I don't feel when I scroll through the photos of the adventure. The blue, green, copper, and their combination evoke the feeling of the forest...the coolness under the rich canopy, the mist in the air, the smell of the damp earth, the energy of the place. I can't describe it with words.

I think that's the point.